It is estimated that about 70,000 people each year suffer serious burns in the United States. The prevalence of venous leg ulcers is between 600,000 and 1,500,000. 10 to 20% of people with diabetes eventually suffer a chronic foot wound. In US, the direct cost of wound dressing is estimated more than $5 billion per year [17]. A significant number of soldiers are evacuated from battlefield because of severe burn injuries. Skin wounds are less severe than the large burns but can potentially result in the temporary loss of soldiers from their unit. Current skin grafts in the hospital include the limited available autografts and costly tissue-engineered grafts (APLIGRAF®, DERMAGRAFT®).
In the past decades, extensive research has been made in the field of in situ crosslinkable materials. The use of these materials is not only limited to the formation of hydrogels [1], thin films, scaffolds [2, 3], and nanoparticles, but also used as fluid sealants [4, 5], post-surgical adhesives [6], cell and biomolecules encapsulation [3, 7], localized drug delivery [8], gene delivery [9], and sutures [10]. The phenomenon of in situ polymerization can be initiated by the means of redox initiators or photo initiators in presence of electromagnetic wave of various wave lengths from gamma rays to ultraviolet rays. These materials show great promise in the field of drug delivery and tissue engineering.
There is an increasing need for suitable biomaterials to address unmet clinical problems. Biodegradable polymers have been long recognized for their uses in tissue engineering and drug delivery applications. However, current FDA approved biodegradable polymers such as Poly(L-lactide) (PLLA) and its copolymers cannot meet all the needs for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. For example, the stiff PLLA is incompliant with soft tissues such as blood vessels, bladders, and cardiac tissues. Therefore, there is an increasing need for a soft, elastic, and degradable polymer that can be used for such applications.